


Bad People

by robberreynard



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: Breathplay, Choking, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 18:02:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11742279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robberreynard/pseuds/robberreynard
Summary: “You thought we would get a divorce and you didn't think for a moment what an awful person that makes you."





	Bad People

**Author's Note:**

> A friend commissioned a Joseph fic

For the most part, things were painfully amicable. It felt like things should be different. When Joseph offered Jean to basically be his mistress (what would a male mistress even be called? A mister? No, that sounded weird... a cuckhold? Was he being a cuckhold?) he had blanched at the idea. It didn't feel quite right. Then again, sleeping with a married father of four had never really felt right. Didn't feel wrong; not exactly. Nothing with Joseph ever felt wrong. The only thing that ever felt even the slightest bit “wrong” about Joseph was the way his wedding ring would press against the webbing of Jean's fingers when he pinned his hand against the sheets. That felt intrusive, jarring, and images of Mary's miserable face glaring at him over the rim of a wine glass came unbidden to his mind, but even then, he could move past it. Sometimes he wondered if it was evil of him to move past it. Ever since Amanda had left for college, he'd spent nights alone staring through the television, his favorite shows little more than white noise to fill a suddenly unbearably empty house, pondering this. What made him worse; fucking a married man and feeling guilty about the pain he was knowingly putting his wife through, but putting her through it anyway, or simply not thinking about her at all? Maybe he deserved to think about that every time they touched.

The fact that Joseph invited him over to the house all the time did nothing to assuage his conscience. Jean stood in that house, amid the family he was actively coming between, and made brownies with Christie. He soothed Chrish when he cried and even got Chris to say more than two words to him. Not _many_ more, but some. Even so, kids, especially Joseph's kids, were smarter than people gave them credit for. Jean couldn't help feeling like they knew. It made the everyday tasks of a happy family tense, he spent most of his time in that house picking at his nail beds and sucking on the wounds where the skin would split. Every family photo and child's toy reminded him that this place, where he felt he should be, where he was needed and wanted, was a place he didn't belong.  
Mary was never there. That made things a little easier for him. The few times they'd passed on the street were far from confrontations, yet still left him with knots in his stomach. Hanging off Robert's arm outside of a bar, she simply narrowed her eyes at him, tipping her head up in a minor acknowledgment of his presence. Robert, on the other hand, did everything to avoid his eyes.

The whole thing was confusing. It was what he wanted, to be with Joseph was all he really wanted, and he had that. With it came all the insecurities and late nights spent staring at the ceiling and the questions. Only one question, really. Only one that mattered.

“Am I a bad person?”

Jean observed the layers of band-aids wrapped around his torn nail beds, stretched his fingers out against the flour strewn counter top, curled them back into his palm. Joseph's hand slid over his and he felt that ring, that small reminder, that thin piece of gold that stood out and kept Joseph's fingers from interlocking perfectly with his. That thing that came between them.

“What are you talking about? You're amazing. You're kind, you raised a fantastic daughter in a loving home, you make the best brownies.” His other hand traced the curve of Jean's cheeks and urged his head to turn towards him. He felt the coarse flour covering Joseph's otherwise soft fingers brush against his skin. He stared at his shoulder, unable to bring himself to look higher. He remembered the photo in the yacht's cabin. He remembered how happy Robert looked in the sweater adorning Joseph's shoulders like a hunter's prized pelt. How dark his eyes looked when he saw the two of them together.  
If Joseph was as bad a person as he seemed to think, maybe they really did deserve each other. Maybe the married man keeping a lover on the side was as fucked up a person as the man putting himself in between a family.

“What brought this on?” Joseph asked. Jean swallowed but something was stuck in his throat.

He hadn't really meant to say it. It just came out. “I'm not sure. Thinking about it I guess.”

“Aren't you happy? The last thing in the world I want is for you-”

“I'm happy,” Jean said, unconvincingly. He _was_ happy with Joseph, more than he had been in months. If he were being honest with himself, Joseph made him happier than he had been since Alex's death. Amanda was the best thing that ever happened to him, but she couldn't fill that empty space left behind by the loss of a spouse. Joseph could, he did, he had been, in as much a capacity as he was capable of.

He smiled in a way that highlighted the dimples in his cheeks, one more perfect feature of a man with seemingly no flaws. That was the reason Mary was even still around, wasn't it? So it looked like Joseph had no flaws.

He pulled Jean in and kissed his forehead. “You're a good man. Don't doubt that.”

They finished baking in near complete silence, Joseph throwing him worried side-eyes now and again, but speaking little of the matter. The next morning, after another night of contemplation and booze, more booze than he ever drank alone, he awoke to a message.

From Joseph:

_Margarita Zone?_

Attached was a photo of a sign with those words written in chalk and strung up with lights, sat against a table with the high shelf tequila and triple sec he always bought. Beyond it was the sea stretching out past the horizon, and he knew exactly where Joseph wanted to meet him.

Jean did the bare minimum in human upkeep (a smudge of deodorant under each arm and a lackluster mouth sweep with a dry toothbrush and a swig of bourbon for mouthwash) and left the house in a jacket and sweat pants. Craig had bought them for their exercise sessions, but they had yet to see the inside of a gym. Jean hadn't really left the house much in the past few weeks. On the drive over, he tried not to think about how the innocent concept of a place where your troubles drifted away had been twisted into a code word for “come fuck on my yacht because I have just enough respect for my wife that I don't want to screw you in our marital bed in the house we raised our kids”. He flexed his fingers around the steering wheel until he stretched far enough he could feel the mending skin beneath the band-aids crack and bleed again.

It was overcast by the time he arrived. The beautiful skyline of oranges and yellows in Joseph's message (his summons, Jean thought with a bitterness he couldn't pretend he didn't feel) was now an ocean of reflected rain clouds and a steady breeze had kicked up. The boats in the marina bobbed with the upset waves that lapped at the docks. The motion made him sick if he stared at them too long. The St. Peter was no better once he climbed aboard, and he had to hold onto the railing to keep himself from falling when a particularly hard gust sent waves rolling underneath them. It wasn't like it had been the first time. “You never forget your first,” he'd told him, in that casual tone that permeated all of their witty repertoire. Remembering all the things he'd said back then left a sour taste in his mouth.

He emerged from the cabin, beaming, but holding back, hesitant to offer Jean much more than a polite greeting. “Weather called for rain, guess I should have listened.” He gestured to the dark clouds above them. “Now we pay the price of my hubris.”

“Maybe God is sending a flood to wipe the Margarita Zone away.”

“We'll just have to build an ark, bring two of every margarita mix. Blackberry Grapefruit, Watermelon, Mango Orange.” He pulled a serious face. “But not Raspberry Rhubarb. I find it offensive to God's domain.”

“And you need Mexican cuties, of course.”

“Naturally.”

Jean gave little beyond a hum, a single note of polite laughter that wasn't really laughter. He wanted it to be genuine. It used to be. Joseph handed him a glass already prepared and rimmed with salt and poured his own from the small blender. The bright red slush stood out in the otherwise dreary gray sky and ocean, like Joseph, who somehow still looked bright in his over-saturated pink polo shirt. Jean used to wonder how many of them he owned- had never thought to check out his closet when he was invited over to his house. It was all part of his carefully cultivated, hip-with-the-kids youth minister look, so having an entire wardrobe full of the same shirt would probably be on-brand for him. He'd certainly never seen him in anything else.  
It occurred to him he was musing at such length about his shirt because his eyes refused to go much further up than that. They stood with only the winds and waves to fill the silence. The sweet tang of the margarita he couldn't take very large sips of brought a dull ache to the back of his jaw, though he suspected that was caused by his recent tendency to clench it in moments of stress. Being with Joseph had never been a cause of stress, but lately...

“Talk to me, Jean.”

He jolted, gaze darting upward, and he finally meets Joseph's eyes, his chest constricts. There was only the honesty and calmness in his face that drew him in in the first place, and he was overcome with a sense of guilt that he had been trying to look away from it in the past weeks. Guilt was something he was becoming more and more accustomed to.

Jean swallowed thickly and set his glass on the table, holding it steady as another storm wave cresting underneath them threatened to slide it off. Once it had calmed, he let himself let go.

“I don't know if I can keep doing this.”

“Isn't this what you wanted? If I've done anything wrong, you can tell me, we-”

“It's not you.”

In a way, it was. Joseph might have been the type to handle this guilt- if that picture of him and Robert together meant what Jean thought it meant, then it wasn't the first time he'd carried on an affair. Some people were just wired to handle it, to compartmentalize, to justify, to twist themselves up with such mental gymnastics that they could be okay doing this. Jean wasn't one of those people.

“Is this what you meant the other day? You think you're a bad person for doing this?” Joseph asked. Jean felt a hand slide across his cheek as he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, fingers lingering as they traced its shape. He leaned in to the touch. Joseph leaned in and went on, in such a soft, warm voice, he could only bask in it, “You are.”

The words didn't register at first It took a moment for the meaning to cut through the tenderness with which they were spoken, and the warmth in his chest slowly receded. He looked up, brow furrowed. “What are you-”

“You're a bad person, Jean. You were perfectly content flirting with a married man, well before you knew Mary and I were even thinking of separating. It was fine then wasn't it?”

“That's not fair.”

He stroked the tender skin behind Jean's ear and down his neck. “Isn't it? What was your ideal outcome to this arrangement? You were hoping I would leave my wife and we would have a happy ever after.”

“You just... you were unhappy, I thought-”

“You thought we would get a divorce and you didn't think for a moment what an awful person that makes you. To wish for that. To hope that I would ruin the lives of my wife and children, just so you could get what you wanted.” There was no resentment in his voice, no malice, and that somehow made it worse. The calm, matter-of-fact way he plunged his hand through Jean's chest and pulled out his heart- was he right?

Jean felt tears bubbling hot in the back of his eyes, but Joseph ran his thumb against his lashes and brushed them away before they came close to falling. “But you were okay with it before. With the flirting and trysts on this very yacht. Now you're not. So what really changed? Nothing. I was married then, I'm married now.” He tipped his head when Jean looked away, never allowing him a reprieve from those untroubled blue eyes that pierced him with accusations. But they weren't accusations- they were simple truths. He couldn't deny that.

“Joseph-”

“So what is it you want? Is all of this too easy for you? Too friendly? You want Mary to break down sobbing and call you a home wrecker? That's it, isn't it? You want there to be consequences.” His fingers slid once more from his ear to the back of his neck, then made their way across his collar bone until Joseph's thumb came to rest in the middle of his throat. Jean's breathing was already labored and his heart was pounding in his ears when he began to press deeper and deeper against his windpipe. “You want to be punished because you know what you're doing is wrong.”

It wasn't posed as a question or as Joseph fishing for consent. He captured Jean's lips, his head so swimming from the conversation and oxygen deprivation he couldn't begin to piece together his own thoughts. Joseph's teeth dug into his bottom lip and pulled back until it hurt before releasing him, the pressure on his throat relaxing just enough he could take a deep breath, but still feel the uncomfortable block stopping him from breathing of his own free will.

If he had said something, it would have stopped. Somehow he knew that, even as Joseph pushed him into the cabin and onto the bed, it all could have gone away if he told him to get off. Truth was, Jean didn't really want it to stop. For the first time in weeks, it felt right again. It felt like this was what he deserved. Where he had been tender and slow in the nights before, now he was rough, impatient, his nails raking up and dragging down Jean's back when his hands weren't enveloping his throat. There was no safety net to catch him as he teetered on the edge of a thin rope, Joseph's wedding ring buried so deeply into his trachea it brought tears to his eyes. It should have worried him how quickly and how eagerly Joseph was ready to punish him, but it didn't. He liked it. The pain of him entering without so much as a warning was almost unbearable, yet he still bobbed his hips, begging for more. Whatever his conscience might have told him, his body couldn't deny that he wanted this.

He was a bad person. He had been wrestling with this because he was convinced of the opposite his entire life. But Joseph was too. It was easy to forget that when looking at his wholesome family and his perfect smile and just how hard he worked to make people overlook the ugliness in him. Mary saw it. Robert saw it. Now Jean saw it too. It was just like Robert had told them at the marina that day;

“You're both awful. You deserve each other.”


End file.
